Is there a systematic way in VisualWorks way of generating classes comments. or is it just expected to write them manually when selecting their comment tabs?
It seems like an organized structure for defining abstract data types, instance etc...
Thought maybe there was a comment generator feature
the comments are meant to contain the intent and purpose of the class, there's no way the computer can understand your intentions.
A class comment can be generated automatically by right clicking the comment text and selecting “Generate Default Comment” from the menu.
The generated comment is rather useless, and you should try to document the class using your own standard.
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I want to make the editor experience better and more visually pleasing when filling in content on a page (In all properties view). Could be a simple divider or a heading..
I am already using tabs, whenever it makes sense. Also, I have been experimenting with using blocks as properties. This adds a nice separation with at clear heading, but it is so much more code to maintain and a bit of a mess to be honest when the properties truly belong to the page type.
Out-of-the-box, it is not possible to decorate properties with headlines, unless you use block-properties, as you mention yourself.
However, I thought your question was quite interesting, and I discovered that extending Episerver to accommodate this behavior is surprisingly easy. I have written an example solution, which you're free to use as you like: https://arlc.dk/grouping-properties-with-headlines-without-property-blocks.
If you dislike the solution, an alternative approach would be to introduce your own Property-type (Headline), and create a 1) a custom dojo-widget to simply display a headline, and 2) an EditorDescriptor to set the ClientEditingClass.
Linus wrote an excellent blog post on this here: https://world.episerver.com/blogs/Linus-Ekstrom/Dates/2012/7/Creating-a-custom-editor-for-a-property/.
EDIT:
I see, I have skipped too quickly over the overriding part.
You don't have to override any files by replacing them, and you won't have to extract Shell.zip (unless you're curious how Episerver has implemented their widgets). The part that overrides the specific component is define("epi/shell/form/Field". As long as your definition of this widget is loaded after shell, dojo will use your implementation, whenever something is requiring "epi/shell/form/Field". The thing that ensures your implementation is loaded after, is in module.config, under 'This injects our field-implementation [...]'.
The path ~/ClientResources/Scripts/Shell/Field/Field.js is simply the location I have chosen to put the overriden version of Field.js. You can put it wherever you like, as long as you update module.config accordingly, with the new path.
It works like this: First, Episerver defines widget A. Then you define a widget with the same name, A. When anything tries to fetch A, it returns your implementation, rather than Episerver's.
I am trying to create a new GUI element within DrRacket's text window, like picts or syntax objects. As far as I can tell, the most standard way of doing this is with a snip%.1
Unfortunately, the documentation for creating new snips, while comprehensive, is a bit impenetrable and leaves some questions to be answered.
For starters, what is the difference between a snip% and a snip-class%? Why do these need to be separated out into two classes, rather than simply being combined into one class? Is it because multiple snips will use one snip class?
Second off, what is snip-reader<%>? Not only why does it need to be a separate class, but why is the module providing it supposed to be installed?2 If it does need to be a new class, why can't it just be referred to directly. Why go through this whole process of constructing and then parsing a string of the form: "(lib ...)\n(lib ...)"?
I mean, there might now be any reason for this design, and it might just be a remnant of an old API. If so, has anyone thought of making a new more consistent API? Or if there is a reason for this design, can you please tell me what it is, as the docs don't seem to make that clear.
I mean, as of right now, I can copy/paste the sample given in the docs on creating a new snip. But I'm having a hard time understanding the design going on here, so I can use them properly.
1I know there are other ways to do it, but I also want to have interactive buttons and whatnot.
2I know it doesn't need to be installed as a library per se, but the documentation seems to strongly push you in that direction.
Okay, I think I finally found the answer. Broadly speaking:
The snip% class includes the methods for drawing the snip, telling the editor how much space to reserve for the picture, and handling events such as mouse clicks.
Next, the snip-class% class is used for encoding and decoding snips. This must be a separate class because when saved to a file, the editor needs to encode what type of snip it is, and for obvious reasons it can't just put the literal snip% class in there. The value it stores in the file is the snip-class%'s 'class name'. This can be anything, and as long as the editor has the classname associated to a snip-class%, it can be loaded. Additionally, if it is of the form "(lib ...)" or "(lib ...) (lib ...)" Racket will just automatically load it into the list for you.
Nothing 'needs' to be installed per se, its just the easiest way to go about it. Otherwise you manually need to tell the editor how to handle the snip before actually loading the file.
This may be a stupid question, but here goes.
I've seen several projects using some translation library (e.g. gettext) working with plain english placeholders. So for example:
_("Please enter your name");
instead of abstract placeholders (which has always been my instinctive preference)
_("error_please_enter_name");
I have seen various recommendations on SO to work with the former method, but I don't understand why. What I don't get is what do you do if you need to change the english wording? Because if the actual text is used as the key for all existing translations, you would have to edit all the translations, too, and change each key. Or don't you?
Isn't that awfully cumbersome? Why is this the industry standard?
It's definitely not proper normalization to do it this way. Are there massive advantages to this method that I'm not seeing?
Yes, you have to alter the existing translation files, and that is a good thing.
If you change the English wording, the translations probably need to change, too. Even if they don't, you need someone who speaks the other language to check.
You prep a new version, and part of the QA process is checking the translations. If the English wording changed and nobody checked the translation, it'll stick out like a sore thumb and it'll get fixed.
The main language is already existent: you don't need to translate it.
Translators have better context with a real sentence than vague placeholders.
The placeholders are just the keys, it's still possible to change the original language by creating a translation for it. Because when the translation doesn't exists, it uses the placeholder as the translated text.
We've been using abstract placeholders for a while and it was pretty annoying having to write everything twice when creating a new function. When English is the placeholder, you just write the code in English, you have meaningful output from the start and don't have to think about naming placeholders.
So my reason would be less work for the developers.
I like your second approach. When translating texts you always have the problem of homonyms. Like 'open' can mean a state of a window but also the verb to perform the action. In other languages these homonyms may not exist. That's why you should be able to add meaning to your placeholders. Best approach is to put this meaning in your text library. If this is not possible on the platform the framework you use, it might be a good idea to define a 'development language'. This language will add meaning to the text entries like: 'action_open' and 'state_open'. you will off course have to put extra effort i translating this language to plain english (or the language you develop for). I have put this philosophy in some large projects and in the long run this saves some time (and headaches).
The best way in my opinion is keeping meaning separate so if you develop your own translation library or the one you use supports it you can do something like this:
_(i18n("Please enter your name", "error_please_enter_name"));
Where:
i18n(text, meaning)
Interesting question. I assume the main reason is that you don't have to care about translation or localization files during development as the main language is in the code itself.
Well it probably is just that it's easier to read, and so easier to translate. I'm of the opinion that your way is best for scalability, but it does just require that extra bit of effort, which some developers might not consider worth it... and for some projects, it probably isn't.
There's a fallback hierarchy, from most specific locale to the unlocalised version in the source code.
So French in France might have the following fallback route:
fr_FR
fr
Unlocalised. Source code.
As a result, having proper English sentences in the source code ensures that if a particular translation is not provided for in step (1) or (2), you will at least get a proper understandable sentence than random programmer garbage like “error_file_not_found”.
Plus, what do you do if it is a format string: “Sorry but the %s does not exist” ? Worse still: “Written %s entries to %s, total size: %d” ?
Quite old question but one additional reason I haven't seen in the answers yet:
You could end up with more placeholders than necessary, thus more work for translators and possible inconsistent translations. However, good editors like Poedit or Gtranslator can probably help with that.
To stick with your example:
The text "Please enter your name" could appear in a different context in a different template (that the developer is most likely not aware of and shouldn't need to be). E.g. it could be used not as an error but as a prompt like a placeholder of an input field.
If you use
_("Please enter your name");
it would be reusable, the developer can be unaware of the already existing key for an error message and would just use the same text intuitively.
However, if you used
_("error_please_enter_name");
in a previous template, developers wouldn't necessarily be aware of it and would make up a second key (most likely according to a predefined wording scheme to not end up in complete chaos), e.g.
_("prompt_please_enter_name");
which then has to be translated again.
So I think that doesn't scale very well. A pre-agreed wording scheme of suffixes/prefixes e.g. for contexts can never be as precise as the text itself I think (either too verbose or too general, beforehand you don't know and afterwards it's difficult to change) and is more work for the developer that's not worth it IMHO.
Does anybody agree/disagree?
I have a (binary)reader, to read DBC files (Its a file format used by a game) into structures, that I know. Every DBC file differs a little bit (their structs), from the others, and their reading method differs too. (there is spell.dbc item.dbc map.dbc etc...)
So I made unique reading methods for all the DBC files I want to read. (I think its not the best solution, but for now, its okey for me.)
Here Is an example usage:
DBCReader reader = new DBCReader(DBCFile.Spell); // you can use DBCFile.Map or others here
Now my question : Is that possible to list only the spell related methods, when I use my reader?
So my DBCReader class contains different reading methods, for all the dbc files,and I would like to only see the spell related ones.
So now when I write "reader." to C#, it lists all my methods for all dbc files, like
ReadMapName() (which is for Map.dbc),
ReadSpellID() (which is for
Spell.dbc), GetItemName() (which is
for Item.dbc) etc..
But I only want the spell related methods to be listed. Is it possible? :)
Thanks.
I'm not aware of a way to get intellisense to display a subset of the methods in a class.
You could make seperate classes for each type, ie:
dbcSpellreader, dbcMapReader, etc.
I want in an application with a simple text input, enriched with some marks to include formatting or semantic labeling. I want the syntax as easy as possible and I want to include self-defined labels.
Example:
[bold]Stackoverflow[/bold] is a [tag]good[/tag] resource for programmers.
Tables would be needed too.
HTML/XML and LaTeX are mighty enough to allow this, but too complicated. Wiki-Syntax seems simple, but uses another symbol for each markup, has unclear quoting and every Wiki seems to have another syntax. For tables and similar stuff Wiki becomes very complicated.
Exists a language/syntax, that matches my needs or can be slightly changed to do so? Or do I have to invent something myself? In that case, do you have suggestions?
Definitely do NOT invent your own. There are plenty of simple markup languages already, and users HATE learning new ones. Trust me on this!
I would suggest using one of the following:
Textile
Markdown
BBCode
Make your decision based on your userbase, as well as what tools and parsers are available in your chosen language. For my site, we went with Textile, but I've found that BBCode tends to be the language that most people already know. However, this will vary with different user demographics.
StackOverflow, along with several other sites, uses Markdown. I think it will give you the best balance between features and simplicity.
Let me add ReStructuredText to the list.
An additional benefit of using it is given by the availability of ReStructuredText to Anything service that makes extremely easy to create HTML or PDF versions of the document.
As already pointed out there are a lot of lightweight markup languages (many are listed here: wikipedia article), there should be no need of creating your own.